Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/75

 is immortal, that its nature is to have a pure existence, but not as yet to exist in the strict sense as this purity—that is, not as yet to exist as spirituality. On the contrary, this essentiality still strictly implies that the mode of existence continues to be sensuous immediacy, which, however, is merely accidental.

Immortality, therefore, means that the soul which is at home with itself or self-contained, as being something essential, is at the same time existing. Essence without existence is a mere abstraction; essentiality, the Notion, must be thought of as existing. Thus realisation, too, belongs to essentiality, but the form of the realisation is still sensuous existence, sensuous immediacy. Now transmigration of souls means that the soul still persists after death, but in another mode of existence, a sensuous mode. The soul being still abstractly conceived of as Being-within-itself, the form assumed is a matter of indifference. The spirit is not known as concrete, is only abstract essentiality, and thus determinate Being; the phenomenal appearance is merely the immediate sensuous shape, which is contingent, and is human or animal form. Human beings, animals, the whole world of life, become the many-hued garment of colourless individuality. Being-within-itself, the Eternal, has as yet no content, and therefore, too, no standard for form.

The idea that man passes into such forms, is accordingly united with the thought of morality, of desert. That is to say, the relation of man to the principle, to nothingness, implies that in order to be happy he must labour by means of continuous speculation, meditation, musing upon himself, to become like to this principle, and the holiness of man consists in uniting himself in this silence with God. The loud voices of worldly life must become mute; the silence of the grave is the element of eternity and holiness. In the cessation of all movement or motion of the body, all movement of the soul, in this extinction of oneself happiness consists. And when a man has reached this